Looks like Ted Davis beat me to the punch, but I'll go ahead and endorse his
request by posting what I was planning to say before I saw Ted's message.
----------------------
The presence of Dr. Collins offers us a unique opportunity to interact with a
Christian who is an expert on genetics and biomedical research. He is
undoubtedly a busy man, so let's be good stewards of his time (and ours). I
suggest that we limit our discussions with him to issues where he is uniquely
qualified to speak, such as his perspective as a Christian on genetic
engineering, cloning, stem cells, what the human genome tells us about
ourselves and our evolutionary history, things like that.
Let's NOT subject him to tons of e-mail about angels, or somebody's favorite
interpretation of Genesis, or dualism vs. monism, or the King James
translation, or the spiritual condition of animals, or whether YEC is a
"cult", or various other subjects that have occupied us these past few weeks.
That is not to say that all those topics are out of place on the ASA list
(though I wouldn't mind if some of them never came back after next week),
just that these topics would not be the best use of our limited time with Dr.
Collins.
I was going to add a word about how we should "behave" for Dr. Collins. But
I really shouldn't have to. Yes, while he is here we should refrain from
personal insults and make sure the messages we post are respectful, reasoned
and edifying. But we should be doing that all the time, whether we have a
"visiting dignitary" or not, because each reader of this list is as precious
in God's sight as Francis Collins. He should not have to suffer the sort of
unedifying chat-room-style noise that has befallen us the past few weeks.
But neither should any of us.
-------------
Supplement: After Terry Gray's comment, I'd agree that it might be worthwhile
to get a perspective on how a prominent scientist (especially one working in
an area where evolution is an important concept) deals with the whole
"origins" thing, IF he is interested in sharing that. But PLEASE lets not
drag him down into the sort of petty and unedifying origins arguments that we
have suffered from recently. He should not have to wade through 50 posts a
day to find the 2 or 3 that are worth reading. I know that I'm tired of
that, to the point where unsubscribing is a tempting option. I'd love to see
Terry's 4 posts/day rule followed voluntarily to keep us from spiraling
further out of control.
Allan
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Dr. Allan H. Harvey, Boulder, Colorado | SteamDoc@aol.com
"Any opinions expressed here are mine, and should not be
attributed to my employer, my wife, or my cats"
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 22 2002 - 21:23:59 EST